Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

Mike laughs. There’s no joy in his laughter. No fun. It’s bitter, angry, cynical. “Frankie,” he says. “Who do I work for now?”

Dave Hansen sits at his desk, staring out the window at the buildings of downtown San Diego.

Rain pelts the window like little stones. Occasionally, a gust of wind brings the rain in sheets, striking the glass with a sound like a flock of birds flapping their wings, taking off as if something had startled them.

Most days, you can see the ocean from this window.

And the ridges of Tijuana, across the border.

Today, he can barely see across the street.

It’s all just fog and rain.

Tears for Frankie Machine.

“Why?” Frank asks.

“Why what?”

“Why do the feds want me dead?”

His head isscreaming. It’s crazy, what Mike’s telling me, that the feds told him to put a contract on me. It doesn’t make any sense the feds going to Mike, then Mike going to Detroit to get the job done. What’s in it for Detroit? What can Mike offer Vince Vena?

“Why ask why?” Mike says. “They didn’t tell mewhy, Frank. They just told mewhat. You’re right-they made me for Herbie, told me if I did them a favor, I could keep my immunity deal. The favor was you.”

“Who?”

“Who what?”

“Who reached out to you?” Franks asks. “Who’s running this thing?”

“They’d kill me if I told you that, Frank,” Mike says.

Frank gestures with the pistol barrel, like, I’ll kill you if youdon’t. But Mike smiles and shakes his head. “That ain’t you, Frankie. You don’t have it in you. Always your fucking problem.”

Mike drains his beer and gets up. “We got us a bitch of a situation here, though, don’t we? I don’t see any way out of it. You sure you don’t want a beer? I could sure as hell use another.”

He walks to the kitchen. “Hey, Frankie, you remember summer of ’72?”

“Yeah.”

“That was a good summer,” Mike says as he opens the refrigerator door. He smiles and starts singing:

“Some folks are born to wave the flag,

Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.

And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief,’

Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord…”

He reaches into the refrigerator, turns back, and points the. 38 at Frank.

Frank shoots him in the heart twice.

It was suicide.

Mike didn’t have the stones to pull the trigger on himself, so he got me to do it, Frank thinks as he leaves the house and gets into the car.

Mike just didn’t want to live anymore.

Frank understands.

It’s what happens, this life of ours.

Piece by piece, it takes everything away from you.

Your home.

Your work.

Your family.

Your friends.

Your faith.

Your trust.

Your love.

Your life.

But by that time, you don’t even want it anymore.

They take him on a downhill curve on Highway 78.

Jimmy the Kid waits with what’s left of the Wrecking Crew.

Paulie’s on injured reserve with his leg wound, but Carlo, Carlo is a gamer, dude. Carlo knows the diff between hurt and injured, and he’s going to be there when the whistle blows. Besides, he’s got a little payback to deliver.

And payback, as they say, is a bitch.

It was Jimmy who figured it out: Sooner or later, Frankie M. would go to Mike Pella to try to get this straightened out. Pella was his wingman, his boy, his goombah. So it was a simple matter of finding out where the feds had Pella stored, then putting a net around it and waiting.

For Frankie M. to fuck up.

Which he did.

Rode right into the old box canyon.

There are only four roads out of Ramona, and three of them break off the same intersection. So when Frankie M. turns north on the 78, they know they got him. It’s the worst-possible route for the man to take, because it winds down the edge of a steep canyon.

A stone cliff on one side of the road, the big drop on the other.

So as Frankie M. goes into the canyon, they put a car behind him. Jimmy’s car waits at a turnoff on the other side of the road, about two miles down.

It’s like one of them old Westerns, Jimmy thinks.

The dumb-ass cavalry goes riding into the canyon.

Where the Apaches are waiting for them.

Frankie M. is Custer.

And I’m Geronimo.

He doesn’t see it coming.

That’s the thing. Fatigue, heartache, the sheer grind of being on the run combine to make him careless.

Of course they wouldn’t hit him at a protected witness’s house. That would be giving the game away. They wouldn’t hit him close, but wait until he was miles away, then do it.

And make it look like an accident.

So he doesn’t see it until it’s too late.

The silver Lexus coming up behind him fast, then-

A black Envoy-a big, heavy SUV-roars up, passes the Lexus, and pulls alongside Frank.

Jimmy the Kid’s in the Envoy, bopping his head up and down like he’s listening to some of that hip-hop crap, then smiles at Frank and jerks his wheel to the right.

The Envoy bumps into Frank’s car, sending it toward the edge of the cliff.

Frank manages to correct it, but Jimmy rams him again.

The physics are against him. Something the businessman in Frank knows is that numbers never lie; arithmetic is absolute. A heavier vehicle at greater speed is always going to win the contest. He tries to pull out, letting off the gas so he can cut behind the Envoy, but the Lexus has him boxed in and bangs him forward. Frank’s only hope is that a car comes up the other way and forces the Envoy to swerve, but even that wouldn’t be any good, because there’d be no place for the Envoy to go and some citizen would get killed.

Which is the only thing I can say for myself, Frank thinks. I never took out anyone who wasn’t in the game.

Only players.

He manages to stay on the road for the top part of the sweeping curve, but physics are physics-numbers don’t lie-and the bottom half is too much for the little rental car, especially when Jimmy the Kid bashes into it again to make sure.

Frank looks over and sees Jimmy waving bye-bye.

Then he goes over the edge.

They say your life flashes in front of you?

Sort of-Frank hears a song.

The Surfaris doing “Wipeout.”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-a…wipeout!”

That insane, sarcastic laugh, then the famous drum solo, then the guitar riff, followed by the drum again.

He hears it all the way down.

Wipeout.

Actually, surfers have about a gazillion expressions for going over the edge of a big wave:

Wipeout, certainly.

Off the lip.

Over the falls.

In the washing machine.

Frank’s been there before.

Tumbling over and over and over, wondering if it’s ever going to stop, if you’re ever going to come to the surface, if you can hold your breath long enough to see the sweet sky again.

Only that waswater -this is earth. And trees, and rocks, and brush, and the horrible sounds of metal being crushed against all of the above-then the sound of a gunshot, which at first Frank thinks is the coup de grace, but is the gunpowder of the air bag going off. The bag smacks him in the face, then along the sides, and the world is this tumbling pillow, this unfun ride as the car plunges down the side of the canyon, scraping against everything in its way.

It’s the scraping that saves his life.

The car scrapes against a tree limb, which slows it down, then against the side of a boulder, then tilts over the edge of a narrow ravine, slides over, and finally comes to a stop against an old post oak.